Thursday, April 21, 2005

A scene in Tescos... A couple start to place the items in their basket onto the checkout. A man with a single item pushes ahead of them, without a word of excuse me. The couple clock the man. The male half of the couple says, "Don't mind us!" - a comment which is simply ignored. So a diatribe follows, asking the queue offender 'why?' and 'who do you think you are?' and warning that, one day, he will pick on the wrong couple and might get punched for his trouble. Stinking of alcohol, the queue jumper snarls, "come on then!" as he hurls his single item (which may, or may not, be a pack of tulip bulbs) down. By now he has been served, as Tescos staff can't differentiate between right and wrong and don't like to offend even their drunkest of customers. With the male half of the couple simply laughing in his face, the enfant terrible of queues turns on his heels and exits, no doubt feeling pleased with himself that he doesn't have to wait his turn at the checkouts like the rest of us. Alas, he will not have learnt any kind of lesson in the supermarket. But, for once in his life, at least he was told about his behaviour. Yes, yes, it was me doing the telling.

Tai Chi again tonight. We are hardly experts and we move with all the grace of a brick. But, if you excuse the above incident, it is, I feel, improving my state of mind. I find myself talking about Tai Chi in an evangelical manner, as if I could ever hope to convert those around me with their fancy David Lloyd Leisure Centre memberships and love of pounding treadmills into taking up a form of exercise so relaxed and laid back that it makes death look positively energetic.

After an al fresco lunch round at mum's with the youngest boy I managed to nip for a beer with a mate who was in town to the pub next-door-but-one to the office - the cynically named to court alco-lovin' journalists (ha, they won't get us that easy...oops n d'oh!) Editorial Inn. Swung back no doubt stinking of ale and played with the beta-testing Google Local (via Simon Brunning's jolly interesting Small Values of Cool), discovering to my shock that I am the corporate business manager of a car hire company in this city I work in. But, aside from that weirdness, what a great little search machine it is.

After all that fuss The Rakes gig has been cancelled. But the biggest shock for Hull's 17 (and declining!) entertainment lovers is the loss of a Richard Digance gig. What a tragedy. And so unexpected and out of character, as his manager David Walker points out: "I've managed Richard since 1988 and I have never known him to be unable to fulfil a date due to illness, but flu has left him bed ridden." And here was me all excited after reading a press release that announced proudly that "If ever there was an artiste who could be described as evergreen, Richard Digance is that artiste". I thought it was Will Young.